Passing in the Night
Linda O'Toole
When I first started transition, I had little experience in passing. But I did notice that even in the beginning, certain people would notice me, others ignore me, some judging me as female, some judging me as male. Why was this so, why so much variance? As I asked myself these questions, I began to look for the reasons. I found that my appearance was only part of passing, the judgments and observations of others also made a difference. I wanted to understand how others perceived gender and maybe use this knowledge to aid in passing. So, as a cognitive psychologist, I decided to explore cognitive models of recognition to understand why people were so variable in judging my gender presentation.
What are cognitive models of gender recognition? There are many possibilities, but I decided to focus my exploration on perceptual recognition models. These models explain how "the brain" takes a percept, such as an image that falls on the retina of the eye, and comes to recognize the image as an object in the world, such as a man or a woman. However, I found little research that has applied these models specifically to the recognition of gender. To help to fill in this gap, I will pick one model and try to apply it to gender recognition.
As a start, I selected an established theory of perceptual behavior called the "Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception" (FLMP for short). This model combines a little information theory, information-processing psychology and decision theory. Don’t worry, I won’t dwell on the details – the important thing is that this model describes how people judge and recognize ambiguous information – a very good start given my goals.
Here is a quick overview of the processes involved. The eye takes a snapshot of the image on the retina about every quarter second. The nervous system and brain start working on this image to decompose it into perceptual features. For the purpose of this discussion, we can consider features to be components to be "large nose", "curved cheeks", "long hair", etc.
Once the image is decomposed into features, the brain must combine these features into an integrated percept in order to make sense out of the world. Here is where the wonders of the FLMP kick in. To perform this integration, the brain compares the perceptual features to information stored in its long-term memory. The result of this comparison is the degree to which the observed features match the stored information. So if the brain’s task is to determine whether the person it just saw was a man or woman, the brain will match the perceptual features against what it knows or has learned about ideal feminine or masculine prototypes.
Next comes the integration stage. The brain now has the visual information, feature information, plus information about the degree the masculinity or femininity of each feature. This information is combined by "fuzzy logical" rules – combination rules that operate on continuous or ambiguous information. The result of this combination is a unified percept. For the purposes of gender recognition, this percept has both an overall masculine and overall feminine score that results from combining the "genderness" of each feature.
Finally, the brain must decide if this person it sees is a man or a woman. If the percept has a high masculine score and low feminine score (or the other way around), the decision is easy – go with the highest score. But what if the scores are closer together (i.e. big strong woman, small delicate man, etc.) – the brain has to make a judgement to resolve the ambiguity. It is this judgement process that provides the most difficulty for someone who is trying to pass. This judgement is based on cultural stereotypes, alertness of the observer, visual angle of the observer, etc. The judgement varies from individual to individual, so one could pass 95% of the time but still find problems with some people.
What I find interesting about this model is that it suggests that when one ‘passes’, one really does ‘pass’. People see you as the gender of your presentation. Also, since people use ‘prototypical’ information to judge gender, one can compensate by enhancing features consistent with the desired gender presentation. So a genetic male that is 6’1" can really pass as female by changing other features in a more feminine direction (i.e. makeup, weight loss, plastic surgery). The trick is to understand how the features are combined, and shoot for the overall effect (the highest overall feminine or masculine score) by tweaking the detailed features.
The amazing thing is that this "judgement" happens in less than a quarter second and is considered to be unconscious. So if you get it right, people smoothly experience you as your gender of presentation – no conscious decision is needed. Also, this model implies that people can pass much better than generally thought, the guidance is all in the understanding of how people perceive the world.
Footnote: Dr. Dominic Massaro developed the fuzzy logical model of perception to explain how people use "continuous" perceptual information to recognize discrete object in the world. Dr. Alice O’Toole has done extensive research on the perceptual features involved in gender recognition of facial structure. The results of these studies can be very helpful in understanding gender recognition and providing aid for learning how to enhance gender presentation.
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